Yesterday someone on Twitter said that “lime jello + orange jello = awesome” and this statement instantly lighted up the part of my brain storing the memory of Jell-O 1-2-3.
Jell-O 1-2-3 was a triple-layered product that had normal Jell-O on the bottom, a foamy layer on the top, and the most scrumptious, creamy, mixture of the other two layers sandwiched in the middle. The product was discontinued in 1996, which means Jell-O 1-2-3 has not been available since before I could drive (legally).
I googled around and quickly found a hack recipe for Jell-O 1-2-3 at the Kraft Foods site. (They must get asked about it a lot.) It seemed simple enough, so I tried making it last night. Here is the recipe followed by my experience.
Jell-O 1-2-3
1 pkg. (4-serving size) JELL-O Strawberry Flavor Sugar Free Gelatin, or any flavor
3/4 cup boiling water
ice cubes
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup thawed COOL WHIP LITE Whipped Topping
DISSOLVE dry gelatin mix in boiling water in bowl. Add enough ice cubes to cold water to measure 1-1/4 cups; add to gelatin mixture. Add to blender; cover and blend 30 sec.
ADD whipped topping; cover. Blend until smooth.
POUR evenly into 4 dessert dishes. Refrigerate at least 20 min. or until set. Store leftover dessert in refrigerator.
Before anyone asks, yes, I know the smoothie spout on my blender is upside down. Don’t worry, gravity is still working as normal in my house (as Java Bean has been carefully monitoring). The blender is old and I have to turn the spout that way to seal it completely. A cap came with the blender as an alternative to the smoothie spout, but was lost in a move when a family member found it and said, “Huh, a bottle cap. Don’t need this!” and threw it in the trash. And before anyone else asks, traditionally sized bottle caps do not fit the spout. I’ve tried. Thus, I use an upside down spout, until I buy a new blender, probably this week, because this one leaked red Jell-O mix out the bottom and looked like it was BLEEDING all over the counter.
Uh, right, so where was I? I mixed boiling water and Jell-O mix in the blender, which was a lot more fun than just stirring it with a spoon like I normally do.
At this point, it wasn’t very frothy yet.
I mixed in the cold water and ice, and then I added the magic ingredient: Cool Whip.
This was the hardest part of the recipe for me because I love few things more than eating whipped cream straight out of the tub. I wish they sold whipped cream in smaller containers, because I usually end up eating a whole box in a day. It’s one of those foods I don’t let myself buy often because I can’t control myself around it.
I then poured the mixture into glasses and let it set, resulting in this:
Not so much Jell-O 1-2-3 and Jell-O 1…3. I got a gradient of textures instead of three distinct layers. I’m not sure if I added too much whipped cream, if I blended for too long or too little, or if the temperature of my water was off. This blogger’s attempt came out better than mine as did this lady’s.
However, it was still tasty, pretty damn low-calorie, and brought back happy memories. I’ll probably try it again as soon as I buy a blender that doesn’t leave my counter looking like an ER.
Hello!
Just wanted to let you know that my wife and I tried this recipe the other night and served them to our nieces and nephews. They enjoyed it so much!
Anyways, thanks a lot for sharing this. Excited to send the next recipe here to my wife.
Have a great day!
LOVED the cat on the counter! My little girl loves to watch me cook too and sometimes gets to lick the bowl! Haven’t tried the recipe yet, but thanks.
OK, I am a little obsessed. I bought about 6 packages of various Jello flavors and have tried several recipes. The first using extra creamy Cool Whip and no blender. That came out with perfect jello bottom layer and a rather dense mousse layer on top. No good.
Then I used the actual recipe off an old Jello 1-2-3 package using jello and Dream Whip. Not bad but still only 2 layers. Then I did several attempts of the Jello sites hack recipe using lite cool whip. None produced the well defined triple layers. They do taste good though.
I would love to know what kind of dry chemical mixture the food scientists at Kraft came up with to add to the jello recipe to facilitate the layering action. By the way , I have not seen one, what I would consider, successful attempt at creating the 3 correctly dimensioned layers. Probably the most difficult part is maintaining the thickest layer of pure jello on the bottom without having ANY of the top 2 layers ingredients remaining in it ! It’s food science at its best. So like the cheating I have seen on some of these sites where they add a layer of whipped cream on top to create the 3rd layer…I’m going to create the bottom layer of regular jello first and then create layer 2 and 3 late. I’m semi retired so I have time to mess with this sort if stuff. I’ll check back. Tim
@Tim – Thank you for taking the time to experiment with this. And yes, please let me know if it works! I was disappointed with my attempt as well. Mixing the layers separately sounds like a good approach.
My mom recreated the 123 Jello with a recipe that had pineapple in it. It turned out perfectly I remember as a kid. The pineapple settled on the bottom, the Jello was in the middle and the foam was on top